Re: [PATCH RFC] virtio_balloon: conservative balloon page shrinking

From: Michael S. Tsirkin
Date: Thu Feb 06 2020 - 04:31:11 EST


On Thu, Feb 06, 2020 at 09:27:04AM +0000, Wang, Wei W wrote:
> On Thursday, February 6, 2020 5:04 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > virtio_balloon_shrinker_count(struct shrinker *shrinker,
> > > struct virtio_balloon, shrinker);
> > > unsigned long count;
> > >
> > > - count = vb->num_pages / VIRTIO_BALLOON_PAGES_PER_PAGE;
> > > + if (conservative_shrinker && global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_PAGES))
> >
> > I'd rather have an API for that in mm/. In particular, do we want other
> > shrinkers to run, not just pagecache? To pick an example I'm familiar
> > with, kvm mmu cache for nested virt?
>
> We could make it extendable:
>
> #define BALLOON_SHRINKER_AFTER_PAGE_CACHE (1 << 0)
> #define BALLOON_SHRINKER_AFTER_KVM_MMU_CACHE (1 << 1)
> ...
>
> uint64_t conservative_shrinker;
> if ((conservative_shrinker | BALLOON_SHRINKER_AFTER_PAGE_CACHE) && global_node_page_state(NR_FILE_PAGES))
> return 0;
>
> For now, we probably only need BALLOON_SHRINKER_AFTER_PAGE_CACHE.
>
> Best,
> Wei

How about just making this a last resort thing to be compatible with
existing hypervisors? if someone wants to change behaviour
that really should use a feature bit ...

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MST